Long-term community development within a researcher network. A social network analysis of the DREaM project cadre
| Published date | 09 July 2018 |
| Date | 09 July 2018 |
| Pages | 844-861 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2017-0069 |
| Author | Hazel Hall,Peter Cruickshank,Bruce Ryan |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Long-term community development
within a researcher network
A social network analysis of the DREaM
project cadre
Hazel Hall, Peter Cruickshank and Bruce Ryan
Centre for Social Informatics, School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University,
Edinburgh, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purposeof this paper is to report the results from a studythat investigated the extentto which
an intervention to developa community of library and informationscience (LIS) researchers –the Developing
Research Excellence and Methods (DREaM)project –was successful in meetingits main objective three years
after its implementation. Of particularinterest are factors that support or hindernetwork longevity.
Design/methodology/approach –Data were collected by online survey/telephone and focus group. From
quantitative data, a social network analysis (SNA) and network diagrams were generated. Focus group
discussions were recorded and transcribed, and data from these were analysed manually.
Findings –Three years after the end of its formal funding period, DREaM endured as a loose but
persistent network. Social ties were more important than work ties, and network members with the
highest network centrality held roles in academic institutions. Physical proximity between members
was important to the maintenance of network ties. Actor status did not appear to have a bearing on
network centrality.
Research limitations/implications –Discussion is limited to consideration of community development
amongst core members of the network only. The “manufactured”nature of the DREaM network and unique
context in which it was formed have implications for the generalisibility of the findings reported.
Practical implications –Social infrastructure is key to the long-term health of a network initiative.
Continued ad hoc support would strengthen it further.
Originality/value –The findings add to understanding of factors important to the development of scholarly
and learning communities. They extend contributions of earlier work that has deployed SNA techniques in
LIS research and research in other fields.
Keywords Library and Information Science Research Coalition, Social network analysis, Networks,
Learning communities, SNA, Developing Research Excellence and Methods, DREaM, DREaM Again,
Scholarly networks
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The broad goal of the AHRC-funded Developing Research Excellence and Methods
(DREaM) project was to develop a UK-wide network of library and information science
(LIS) researchers. The mechanism for this was the delivery of five network events in
2011 and 2012:
•a launch conference in London in July 2011;
•three linked workshops held in Edinburgh and London (October 2011, January 2012,
and April 2012); and
•a concluding conference in London in July 2012.
A follow-up study in 2015, entitled DREaM Again, presented an opportunity to measure
the impact of DREaM three years after the project ended. A total of 32 DREaM
participants, who had attended the three research methods workshops in 2011 and 2012,
completed surveys and contributed to focus group discussions in summer 2015.
The analysis of the data collected from these two exercises allowed for an examination of
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 74 No. 4, 2018
pp. 844-861
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-05-2017-0069
Received 4 May 2017
Revised 1 February 2018
Accepted 7 February 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
844
JD
74,4
the impact of the DREaM project as a whole, as well as consideration of the extent to
which those 32 academics, researchers, practitioner researchers, and PhD students in 2012
(known as“the cadre”) who had participated in the workshopscontinuedtooperateasa
community three years after its formal completion.
It was also possible over the course of this second project to verify anecdotal reports of the
impact of DREaM. This was important in cases where outputs of members of the group, such as
the textbook Research Evaluation and Audit (Grant et al., 2013), were being claimed as physical
evidence of community engagement post-DREaM and regarded as part of the project’slegacy.
The focus of this paper is the extent to which the DREaM cadre members were still in a
network three years after the delivery of the initial DREaM project. The evidence presented
here demonstratesthat the group continued to work as a loose, but persistent, network where
social tieswere more important than work ties, and withacademics and researchers at its core.
These findingsare explored with reference to priorresearch that has deployed social network
analysis (SNA) to identify factors that influence network longevity. The study responds to
general callsin LIS research such as thatof Bawden and Robinson (2013,p. 2590) to “seek new
insights in the overlap and interplay of the social and the individual”in practice, and others
specific to SNA to take the opportunity of addressing gaps in knowledge related to the
evolutionary nature of networks (Schultz-Jones, 2009, p. 626).
The findings are significant because they add to understanding of the factors that are
important to the development of scholarly and learning networks, particularly in respect of
changes in network density over time, network centrality and status, and the importance
of physical location of network members. In doing so, they extend earlier work on networks
in both LIS and other domains. More generally, this study represents a contribution to the
wider body of literature that generates theoretical insight on group phenomena through
the deployment of SNA. In addition, since this is a (rare) longitudinal study, it contributes
new knowledge on the evolution of a social network, and thus allows for consideration of the
dynamic nature of network development.
A literature review sets the context for the longitudinal study of the DREaM network,
both in terms of the wider body of work on networks and SNA and earlier publications on
the DREaM project. This is followed by an account of the research design and
implementation of DREaM Again, and the main findings generated from the study. Next,
the development of the network’s topology over four years is considered with particular
reference to the findings of prior research. Practical implications and recommendations are
then discussed. The paper concludes with a summary of the main contributions of the work,
and an indication of further on-going research related to the DREaM network.
2. Literature review
The study of social networks has a long history (Cooke and Hall, 2013, pp. 789-791). Indeed,
some social network research dates from as far back as the nineteenth century (Wölfer et al.,
2015, p. 46). Taking in account this long period of research interest in social networks, it is
unsurprising that a recent co-citation and cluster analysis of a subset of its literature –on
social networking sites –identified 2,565 articles and 81,316 citations for consideration
(Shiau et al., 2017).
A proportion of the published work on social networks makes reference to SNA as a
valuable technique to investigate the mechanisms and social structure that underlie group
behaviour and reveal the nature of networks reviewed (Wölfer et al., 2015). The network
characteristics explored include the evolution and structure of networks, the ties between
network members and the social capital that they share, and the measurement of network
value (Shiau et al., 2017, pp. 394-395).
In recent years, there has been a burgeoning of such studies. As illustration, Wölfer et al.
(2015) reported that a literature search on the records of a single database (PsychINFO) for
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